Europe & Central Asia

2011

Top Developments
• Provincial reporters targeted in a series of attacks; editor reported missing.
• Television journalists continue to face heavy political influence.

Key Statistic
1: Mastermind identified in Gongadze murder. Prosecutors stir controversy by blaming only a dead official for the plot.

The disappearance of a critical editor, a series of violent attacks, and several instances of politicized government regulation fueled deteriorating press freedom conditions. Authorities brought charges against another suspect in the 2000 murder of editor Georgy Gongadze, but they ended their long investigation amid controversy by naming a dead official as the sole mastermind.

Key Statistic
6: Journalists in prison on December 1, the highest figure in the region.

Even as President Islam Karimov was calling for more "active" news reporting, his government was rolling out a new tactic designed to quash critical journalism. Using an obscure state agency to formulate the charges, Uzbek prosecutors arrested at least three journalists on vague allegations of defamation. In one of the cases, a photographer was convicted of insulting the whole of Uzbek citizenry with her images of life in rural Uzbekistan.

On January 19, 2007, Hrant Dink, the founder
and editor-in-chief of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos, was gunned down in front of his office building in Istanbul.
The murder sent shockwaves through the Turkish and international human rights
and press freedom communities. It also triggered a mobilization of thousands of
Turkish intellectuals, activists, and citizens that marched through the streets
of Istanbul under banners claiming "We are all Hrant Dink."

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New York, February 11, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns today's imprisonment in Minsk of Andrzej
Poczobut, a Grodno correspondent for the largest Polish daily,
Gazeta Wyborcza, and calls on
Belarusian authorities to release him immediately.

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New York, February 8, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists called on Russian authorities today to allow Luke Harding, Moscow
correspondent for the U.K. Guardian, to
return to Russia and resume his work. Harding, at left, was refused entry to Russia on
Saturday.

The journalist had temporarily returned to London in the
fall to report on U.S. diplomatic cables released to the Guardian by WikiLeaks.
He tried to re-enter the country on a valid visa, but was turned down at Moscow's
Domodedovo International Airport, Harding told CPJ. A guard seized his passport
and led him to a detention unit. He told the journalist: "Access to Russia is
closed to you," without further explanation, Harding said.

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Some good news out of Samara. As we've reported previously,
trumped-up piracy accusations have been frequently used in Russia to intimidate independent media. Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, a Russian editor, has spent years fighting piracy prosecutions against
himself and his publications in the region. This week, he was
declared not guilty. Russia's Finance Ministry was ordered to pay
him 450,000 rubles or $15,200 for the false charge of using pirated
software.
RFE/RL reports:

Kurt-Adzhiev appealed the court's decision over a period of
two and a half years. Samara's Oktyabr (October) district court
ruled on February 2 that Kurt-Adzhiev was not guilty and ordered
the ministry pay compensation.

Kurt-Adzhiev told journalists
he was satisfied with the court's ruling. He said the case
against him in 2008 was politically motivated. He said police
also visited the branch offices of "Novaya Gazeta" in Nizhny
Novgorod in 2008 and confiscated computers.

February 4, 2011 2:03 PM ET

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New York, February 1, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is outraged that the Baku Appeals Court has rejected imprisoned
editor Eynulla Fatullayev's latest appeal and continues to defy a ruling by the
European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that called for his release.

On January 25, the court denied Fatullayev's appeal of his July conviction on a trumped-up charge of drug possession, the independent Caucasus news website Kavkazsky Uzel reported. His lawyers will contest the ruling at Azerbaijan's Supreme Court, and file a new case at the European court, his father, Emin Fatullayev, told CPJ.

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New York, January 31, 2011--Belarusian authorities
must lift restrictions on newly freed journalists Natalya
Radina and Irina Khalip, and drop the fabricated charges against them, the
Committee to Protect Journalist said today. CPJ also called for the immediate
release of the still-jailed reporters Boris
Goretsky and Yevgeny Vaskovich.

Unless European Union officials mean to expose the
inconsistency of their own policymaking, they should stand firm by their declared
commitment to defend press freedom and human rights in the former Soviet countries. For now,
their drastically different approaches to authoritarian leaders in Belarus and
Uzbekistan leave one questioning the EU's strategy.